(I'm posting this for reference for others, and correction and cautions are requested, as I am a linux newbie)

{ EDIT: This is Elyssa 5-r1 }

I installed Mint as a triple boot (XP and Ubuntu also), but it would stall out, and after about 5 minutes, drop down to the 'initramfs' prompt.

After reading a thread here on the subject, I determined that Mint had not picked up my drive as IDE, but instead as SATA. I received the following error message right before I got the initramfs prompt (paraphrased):